This Floating Points event will start with Ulises Mejias and Trebor Scholz both presenting their positions about opportunities and problems with participation in sociable web media. They will then discuss each others argumentation and end with a debate open to the public at large. The sheer scale of current networked sociality demonstrates the potential of sociable web media to democratize society through emerging cultures of broad participation. While phenomena like information overload accompanied the emergence of communication technologies for a very long time, this current social turn is new.Continue reading

Sonorous + Sonanos

Nathan (without a title) is a play by the Danish dramatist Christian Lollike staged by Aarhus Theatre. In Nathan (without a title) the actors are surrounded by an interactive digital scenography created by the Danish scenographer Claus Helbo in collaboration with CAVI. The recent staging of the play takes place in the Cathedral in Aarhus. In the interactive digital scenography, footage shot with a thermal camera is projected onto the vault of the cathedral. The interactive part consists of the actors being able to interact with falling pieces of projected text that are closely connected to the course of action.

The play adresses the ever present question of whether Christians, Jews and Muslims will be able to unite in a peaceful co-existence. Christian Lollike wishes to put tolerance to the test in a religious space, and that is why the performance takes place in the Cathedral in Aarhus.

Sonorous + Sonanos

Abstract: Sonorous is an experiment in game design which aims to explore the possibilities of using music and sound as an alternative to traditional story-like narrative as the primary means of creating context for gameplay, and facilitating player engagement. Sonorous takes the form of a shortened Real Time Strategy game, where each unit the player controls takes on the properties of a musical instrument in the player’s own temporary musical ensemble group. Through player choices and actions, the units will dynamically create and alter the musical score. The primary experiential goal of the piece is to evoke a grooving, or joyful dancing reaction in the player. The primary research goal of the project is to identify several tenets of Interactive Sound Design as they relate to games, in the hope of unveiling new game mechanics and systems which could be applied to arcade style and casual video games.

Replication of 1st Life or More?

“Who wouldn’t enjoy the opportunity to change all the things about your life that you most yearn to change? This is the question the designers of Second Life had in mind when they built their successful massively-multiplayer online world. Second Life is not premised upon the completion of quests, doesn’t require you to have a job, doesn’t demand that you defeat any alien races or slay any dragons. The whole idea of Second Life is that you have, well - a second life in all of its minutiae. Starting with the creation of a new you, the Second Life world offers opportunities for the designing and construction of virtual clothing lines, virtual cars and yachts, and even virtual villas. There’s been loads of hype, so much so, that celebrities make appearances, and big business has taken note.

For all the grand dreams of what life could be in Second Life (SL), this metaverse, as it’s called, is decidedly more geared towards the exploration of post-silicon body modifications than the possibilities of spatial experience free of gravity, budget, and all those persnickety details. When it comes down to it, from an architectural perspective, Second Life just sort of replicates suburbia. In a universe built from free and easily manipulated virtual building units, there is a surprising lack of interesting work going on. Evidence, perhaps, that spatial banality is not just a symptom of something larger, but an affliction in and of itself.” Continue reading Architecture’s Second Life. Continue reading

BlenderPeople

BlenderPeople is a free, open source crowd and combat simulation project. The system uses a combination of Blender 3D, Python programming and a MySQL database to generate and track the motion and interaction of Actors within a simulated environment. Although there have been other partial implementations of free crowd simulation software, BlenderPeople is the only one currently in development that offers a complete solution, from initial visualization through final rendering with high resolution character models. The project is not intended to be a realistic crowd simulation in the sense that one could use it to model emergency escape routes for architectural design, but focuses on producing animation that will be believable from an entertainment perspective. Technical issues that are addressed in BlenderPeople are different path finding algorithms for different time constraints, avoidance and self-structuring behavior of Actors from short rule sets, programming of Actors through simple distance thresholds, and a novel approach to footstep based character animation. Currently, the project’s focus is on slashing search times for nearest neighbors from the field of Actors. Continue reading

turned is an interactive and multi-media dance performance, developed and performed by media artist Chris Ziegler from Munich, with Kazue Ikeda, a Japanese dancer currently working in Berlin and DJ Florian Meyer (Institut fuer feinmotorik). The performance combines elements from dance, painting, visual art and music. The recorded images of the dancing body are sampled and distorted by electronic processing. The motion deconstructed in this manner opens up a poetic vision of loss and destruction. The viewer is taken along on a quest for clues. The piece turned is a turntable: it begins as a concert, continues as dance and then turns into an interactive video sequence and finally into a VR-installation - a multi-media-based spatial structure evolving before the eyes of the viewer. Continue reading

Big House / Disclosure was constructed using audio interviews conducted by Northwestern University students with Chicago-area citizens about slavery and the cityÂ’s slavery era ordinance. Mixing these interviews with elements of Chicago house music, the artists created a multi-channel sound installation. The project includes 200 video clips of live art and musical performances viewable from the website. Musical events in the sound installation are triggered by custom-designed software tracking the real-time rise and fall stock prices of several corporations that have admitted to profiting from slavery. Continue reading

Aesthetic Evidence’s music is based on recordings of human voices which the band members make both in the field and, in certain situations, in real-time during perfomances. These spoken voices are combined with instrumentation and singing voices to form their music. Using various sampling and triggering technologies, the band re-creates their songs live by playing traditional instruments along with real-time electronic manipulations.

Halsey Burgund uses a malletKAT, an electronic mallet percussion controller, to trigger voice samples and play various sounds while guitarist, Peter Bailey, fills out the arrangements with both electric and MIDI guitar. Please go here for more information and music downloads. Continue reading

steve boyer

Humanity is undergoing an Evolution of Abstraction. The physical forms and social and economic structures that have previously defined human identity are disintegrating, often being replaced by their symbolic representations. As these new modes of being replace the old we are faced with a Crisis of Identity in that assumptions about what it means to be human are challenged by new technologies, social narratives and biological realities. But every crisis presents an opportunity and at this critical turning point in human history we have a unique opportunity to rewrite the narrative codes that allow societies to self-organize and prosper. and to re-synthesize what it means to be human. Continue reading

RL >><< SL

Sousreality — by Drew Harry, Dietmar Offenhuber and Orkan Telhan at the MIT Media Lab — is a pair of connected spaces linked through the metaphor of a crystal ball. In the SIGGRAPH gallery is a crystal ball that peers into Second Life, and in Second Life there is a crystal sphere containing a real-time inside-out vision of the gallery. The images of the spaces align visually and are also connected by audio.

The metaphor of the crystal ball informs this piece in several ways. Crystal balls are a tool for seeing into an alternate reality, a reality that maybe has something to do with the future, or may simply be created by our own minds. This vision is available to anyone, but requires the interpretation of a mystic. Our crystal ball functions the same way. It requires our presence and manipulation to keep the connection clear and open. We see our role as technologists similar to the role we play in this piece - we are expected to interpret the lessons of Second Life to predict the future of virtual worlds but often feel no more skilled at this task than mystics attempting to interpret visions in a crystal ball. Continue reading